On Zero Tolerance policies and where they can take us

(Via mock_the_stupid and comments on the post)

A student punished for bringing scissors to a sewing class at school

Losing my Tolerance for "Zero Tolerance" (and a sequel)

Benq

I'd seen the brand "Benq" around in computer circles, and wondered how it was pronounced (bengk? ben-queue?).

When I watched LOTR III: ROTK, there was a Benq advertisement before the film; like the film, the advertisement was in English, and the voiceover said "ben queue".

But today I came across a Gwoyeu Romatzyh-to-Pinyin conversion table and wonder whether "benq" is Gwoyeu Romatzyh... in which case it'd correspond to Pinyin beng4 (bèng), which is much more pronounceable.

(Zhongwen.com lists three characters pronounced "bèng": 迸 繃 蹦 (though 繃 can also be first or third tone, with different meanings).)

On the other hand, they do spell their company name as "BenQ" (or, in their logo, benq) rather than "Benq", so that may be out.

I wonder where the name is from, then.

Dui mian de nü hai, kan guo lai

Found this in zhongwen in this entry—

http://www.resnet.trinity.edu/jkrause/SWF/kanguolai.swf, a cute flash animation of Richie Ren Xianqi's song "Dui mian de nü hai kan guo lai" (對面的女孩看過來 / 对面的女孩看过来).

As far as I can tell, it's about a boy singing to a girl to look at him and not to be scared of how he looks, and about his musings that he is alone and wishes he could understand what goes on in women's heads.

Text available (in simplified and/or traditional Chinese) on request. I could probably also make a Pinyin version if someone wanted one, but it'd take a while.

Timwi's last-is-first meme

Instructions: Look at your interests list. Take the first interest that ends in a letter (i.e. skip things like ♥, ∞, etc.). Take the last letter, and find the first interest that begins with that letter. Continue this process until you come back to one you've visited before. Write this one down. Then do the same with your friends and friend-of lists!

For me, that yields:

• the internet
• s2howto
• earlemartin